After the success of my triathlon a couple of weeks ago, I am now facing the hardest week of the training plan. I chose a medium plan this time, so the intensity is not as high as in previous plans. The peak week I’ve just had was just under 15 hours in total. The difference with this plan, however, is the difficulty of the speed workouts during the week.

The week started with a long pool swim on Monday and my first problem. It had just been a bank holiday, and all the local pools were closed. In the past, when this happened, I signed up for a trial at a gym with a pool. I would go to the gym, ‘try out the pool,’ and decide it wasn’t for me after completing my session. With Covid this time around, I found this harder than I expected. My next option was open water swimming. Luckily, the weather was ideal and the open water location I normally go to was open. I got my session in.

After this came the two speed sessions—one on the bike and one running. Both of these have been hard in previous weeks, and this week was no different. The change, however, was that the sessions were now at their longest. The sessions were essentially long interval sessions with very little rest. I was working really hard on both the bike and the run for about 55 minutes each. These sessions were tough. Towards the end of both, you could see from the power/pace output that I was struggling to maintain the required goal, but I made it through and completed both sessions.

On Thursday of this hard week, I found out I had been promoted at work. This put me in a great mood, and the two sessions I had that day—a high-power, low-cadence bike session and an interval swim session—went surprisingly well. The downside of this promotion was the inevitable celebration drinks on Friday. This posed an issue for me, as I had the long bike and run over the weekend.

So, to avoid doing the long bike hungover on Saturday, I organised an early finish at work on Friday and completed it then. I felt really strong on the bike and finished the 4-hour 50-minute ride feeling very happy with myself. I then did a 20-minute run straight after, which went just as well. I had the drinks Friday night and lasted the whole night, waking up the next morning feeling much better than expected. I don’t know if it was due to increased fitness, the large amount of water I consumed, or just good luck, but I didn’t complain.

Sunday came, and I completed my 2 and a half hour run feeling like I could have easily carried on. For what was billed as a really hard week, I felt quite confident and strong. Next week is a recovery/fitness test week. This will be the last fitness test I do before completing the Ironman. I will be excited to see if I have improved since last time.